The Influence of Greek Gods, Human Evolution and Acoustic Engineering.

The first in a series

PAN

Welcome to the Just Ask PAN music blog – a wide-ranging discussion of topics of interest to enthusiasts, creators and performers of serious music. 

We’ve recently engaged PAN, that old “Arcadian Agonistes” himself, to lead our exchange, and we hope he will inspire your own questions and comments.

We started by asking PAN to give us a little of his backstory.

Q: So tell us a little about yourself, especially regarding music.

A: Most people associate me with lecherous behavior. I do suffer from a reputation as a nymph chaser, but ye gods! I am so much more than that. Today, springtime brings out my love for the bucolic beauty of the fields and groves and wooded glens; and swells my heart with the joy of music.

Q: Tell us more about your love of music.

A: Well I was once smitten with the nymph Syrinx. She was the daughter of Ladon, the river-god. She was quite hot actually. 

But she wanted no part of me. No accounting for taste I guess. She pleaded with Zeus to save her. So when I finally caught her, Zeus turned her into a bouquet of swamp reeds.

Q: And that was the end of it?

A: Oh, no. I was pissed and smashed the reeds in pieces. Then, to make matters worse, I was struck with remorse and I wept. Heartbroken, I caressed the broken reeds as they reminded me of my beloved Syrinx. As I kissed the reeds, I discovered that my breath could create sounds from them, and lo, I had created a musical instrument - the syrinx or pan pipes as they are called today. Pretty far out, huh?

We'll continue our conversation with PAN as our blog series goes on. But right now let's hear what Pan has to say about more important subjects. 

THE HUMAN EAR: AS A DEFENSIVE MECHANISM  

In the course of time, the human ear evolved first and foremost as one of our primary defensive mechanisms. The ear is our first line of defense against enemies, or our best organ to identify the location of potential prey.

Our ears allow us to hear approaching threats from all sides, whereas the eyes needed to be in front for focus, and they only have about a 120-degree field of view. 

The ear and the brain work this magic by perceiving that sounds, say, from the left ear present one image, and a second image from the right ear because the sound there is somewhat delayed, and the sound itself altered by our brains.  

The combination of ear and brain uses this information to not only detect the location of a sound, but its relative distance from us. How this works is far from understood, but that it works, and is necessary to our survival, is clear to this day.

Just step into a busy urban crosswalk and judge your own reaction to the horn from a truck - the one that you did not see - making a fast right-hand turn into your path. Chances are good that you will instinctively jump back, and away from the sound of the horn, and the oncoming truck. 

 

SCIENCE IS BEHIND THE MAGIC OF LIVE MUSIC. 

The sound we hear at a musical performance, in an enclosed space with walls and a ceiling, combines the sound from the music’s origin, on the stage, say, and the sound as it echoes around hard surfaces in the concert hall. This is sound reflection.

Sound paths in a concert hall can move in different ways. Consider the side view of a concert hall:

And a top-down view:

The echoed sound is delayed. While its relative volume is considerably lower than the original sound, it can still be heard by the ear.  Materials in a hall are frequency selective, echoing some frequencies more than others, meaning that the composite sound to the ear is effectively distorted relative to the original music.

In a very large hall (seating 3,000+ people) the echoed sound may be so delayed that it cancels sound from the stage, creating audio “dead spots” in the hall.  However, the more general effect of the echoes is to give the music a sense of life, or vitality, and a sense of space, as the ear associates the echoed sound with a point in the hall creating the echo, rather than the music’s original location.

This sound-source effect can be very pronounced, say, in a living room with no carpeting or drapes, hard furniture and a large piano, almost to the point of auditory discomfort.

But the more common experience of sound-source effect in a concert hall is pleasure, as a result of sound distortion. It creates a sense of immersion, of being within the sound rather than an object of the sound.

THE BEST CONCERT HALLS IN AMERICA. 

Symphony Hall in Boston (home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra) is an example of where science became an essential part of concert hall design. Credit this breakthrough to Wallace Clement Sabine, a physics professor from Harvard University, who founded the field of architectural acoustics.

Symphony Hall in Boston.

In the late 19th century, Sabine was the first person to carry out scientific measurements to help understand how sound behaves in rooms, and then designed a space accordingly.

Completed in 1900, the auditorium is still considered to be one of the top venues for classical music in the world. A modern incarnation of PAN would be dancing with delight at the richness of the music at this venue.

In summary, the best concert hall experiences are one part human evolution, one part acoustic engineering, one part the musical talent of the composers, and an obviously healthy dose of artistic excellence from the conductor and performers. 

In our next post we’ll look inside another of the best modern-day American concert halls – the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

We’ll also consider new approaches for creating better quality digital recordings. These methods are aiming to more closely reproduce the live concert hall experience. 

                

                